


Licorice

by stephanericher



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-09
Updated: 2019-04-09
Packaged: 2020-01-07 04:48:56
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,048
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18403427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stephanericher/pseuds/stephanericher
Summary: Shuuzou thinks he knows guilt inside out. Then he meets Tatsuya.





	Licorice

**Author's Note:**

> happy(?) 4/9

Shuuzou thinks he knows guilt inside out. Then he meets Tatsuya.

It’s not what strikes him first, or second, or until they really start to get to know each other. Shuuzou’s always had a weakness for a pretty face, and those soft hands and gorgeous basketball moves and the way Tatsuya fights and the way he speaks are an impression stronger than slamming a motorbike back down to the asphalt when you’ve been riding it as hard as it will go on the back wheel for three blocks. He’s aloof; he doesn’t show his hand, and of course Shuuzou wants to see it. Tatsuya doesn’t tip it, though; it’s an accident of fate, like their meeting, that Shuuzou sees. They’re taking turns shooting threes at bad angles; Tatsuya’s made four in a row but the fifth bounces off the rim and back to him. He’d taken a while to set up, and Shuuzou’s mind had been drifting back to the hospital, where he’d left his father sleeping and his sister doing her homework, mouthing the English words in her book as she’d read them, and the guilt had seeped back in under Shuuzou’s defenses.

Tatsuya picks up the ball, a frown on his face that Shuuzou’s about to tease him for (Tatsuya’s still made twice as many shots as he has) but the disappointment and annoyance is undercut by the same thing Shuuzou sees on his own face in the mirror. The guilt is subtle, and were this even a moment earlier Shuuzou might not see it but it’s there.

Shuuzou holds out his hands to receive the pass.

* * *

Basketball always seems to unlock Tatsuya’s defenses; his placid exterior churns and his voice raises. It’s not emotion for show, the way a lot of the kids Shuuzou had played with at Teikou played, grunts and shouts to show the coaches that they were really trying hard, toeing the line between acceptability and showboating. No doubt Akashi’s all but eliminated that now with the kind of tight ship he runs, but he’s a different kind of captain than Shuuzou.

This is different. There is nothing performative or self-conscious about it, despite Tatsuya’s obviously practiced and polished moves. Tatsuya’s far less impulsive as a fighter, his mouth a flat line and his face like the riveted walls of an elevator. On the court he’s a little bit wild, emotions cycling through, happiness and disappointment and determination and want and, still, guilt, self-loathing, a more bitter flavor than Shuuzou’s own ever was, black coffee mixed with black licorice.

A couple of times, Shuuzou’s almost reached out to touch him. To rub his back, to cup his cheek. He’s not too stupid to see Tatsuya’s boundaries.

* * *

Tatsuya’s the one who kisses Shuuzou, because it’s Tatsuya who decides when he’s good and ready, and because it’s extremely fucking obvious Shuuzou wants him (and Shuuzou has never, until now, been able to guess where Tatsuya’s feelings fall on the spectrum from him just being delusional to Tatsuya wanting him just as much). Shuuzou kisses back just as much, fisting a hand in Tatsuya’s t-shirt, tongue on Tatsuya’s dry lips like he’s starving.

“Shuu,” Tatsuya says, as if he’s about to cry.

Shuuzou holds Tatsuya closer. Tatsuya doesn’t grab onto him, but he doesn’t pull away, either.

* * *

Shuuzou speaks freely of his own guilt. It’s not a bargaining chip, used in the hopes that Tatsuya will spill his own secrets. He just can’t keep it inside of him, and he can’t talk about it with anyone else. Tatsuya understands the powerlessness, the feeling of having betrayed one’s self, the deep and contradictory undertow of selfishness and shortsightedness the leads you to stare down the rearview mirror.

“It’s not your fault,” Tatsuya says, and on Shuuzou’s better days he wants to believe it, and nearly does.

Tatsuya’s hand fits in Shuuzou’s, small and smooth, his nails blunt.

“I stressed him out. He smoked more. He was trying to quit—he had three kids; the youngest two weren’t total fuckups yet.”

“You don’t know if it was the smoking that gave him cancer. Or that he wouldn’t have smoked if you hadn’t acted out—he might have been stressed anyway, from work or from taking care of the three of you or from trying to quit smoking.”

“I know,” says Shuuzou. “But it didn’t help.”

Guilt and responsibility don’t help, either; they don’t give him any more control. Being a good kid now (as much as he is, if he even is) won’t pay it back. Shame won’t buy forgiveness from his father; Shuuzou already has that (and the guilt twists back on him like a snaking mobius strip).

Tatsuya does not say what makes him feel guilty, what past misdeed stabs him from the inside out. It’s got something to do with basketball, but basketball is still his escape; he escapes from himself as he escapes within himself. It’s as if he’s preparing for a battle, like shooting a sharper three will somehow atone or prove or justify.

Tatsuya turns his hand over in Shuuzou’s; Shuuzou pulls it into his lap. He brushes his thumb over Tatsuya’s knuckles, a tacit invitation that Tatsuya politely refuses.

“You’re a good son, Shuu,” Tatsuya says, eventually. “And a good brother.”

It’s a contrast to himself, somehow; Shuuzou knows that much.

* * *

Shuuzou slides his fingers under the chain around Tatsuya’s neck, only to touch skin. He never gets there, not enough to feel; Tatsuya freezes, shoulders tensing; he jerks back and the necklace is taut against Shuuzou’s fingers, quickly Shuuzou pulls his hands away. Tatsuya’s face turns toward everything that isn’t Shuuzou’s, a naked attempt to hide in plain sight, more frantic than Shuuzou’s ever seen him.

“I’m sorry,” says Shuuzou.

“It’s okay; it was just…you know, instinct,” says Tatsuya.

Shuuzou accepts it, but one of these days he won’t. He’s carried his own guilt too long to let it stay forever. No matter what, no matter how the necklace and the missed shots and the way Tatsuya runs and fights and fires himself up all plays into it, no matter how awful he is or thinks he is, Shuuzou will help him shoulder that.

Tatsuya kisses him rougher, and Shuuzou hopes he’s not closer to a breaking point.


End file.
